


The Promise

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Series: an unquiet mind [10]
Category: From Paris with Love (2010)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Concussions, Culture Shock, Deals with Faeries, Depression, Dimension Travel, Dreams vs. Reality, Drug Abuse, Established Relationship, Fae & Fairies, Family, Fantasy, Hunters & Hunting, Light Angst, M/M, Magic, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Partners to Lovers, Promises, Prophetic Visions, Romance, Seelie Court, Trope Bingo Round 13, Unreliable Narrator, h/c_bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: Reece finally takes one hit too many, or does he?





	The Promise

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Trope Bingo](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/37096.html) for the prompt Unreliable Narrator. Also written for [h/c_bingo](https://immolate-the-silence.dreamwidth.org/34933.html) for the prompt Culture Shock. 
> 
> **Series:** an unquiet mind

Reece was hunched sloppily over a coffee table, white sleeves half or mostly coated in powder though most of it staining his discarded black jacket, the little left of Wax’s secret stash he had spread out in two thin little lines beneath his blurred vision. He was already drunk, six shots in and unsure whether the table was really the floor or whether he just couldn’t see the glass anymore because he’d smudged right over his reflection and hopefully he didn’t just hear the door open because he really needed this tonight and not even Wax  _especially _ not Wax would take it from him. 

Wax had walked out on  _him_ after the biggest fucking argument they’d possibly ever had; that was saying something too, considering all the arguments they’d had since they hooked up. Started dating, that is, Reece snorted. Who knew Wax being into ‘chicks’  _and _ guys would be funny when he  _wasn’t _ sober? Who knew the whole partners at work, partners in life thing would sound so goddamn stupid and even hilarious now that all of Reece’s defenses were down, taking all his common sense right along with them? 

Fuck relationships being hard and  _fuck _ keeping a clear head. Reece was tired of being the rational, levelheaded,  _responsible_ one. 

Reece couldn’t even remember what it had been about, probably something stupid and unimportant, but then probably something actually important and really earth shattering for Reece to have picked up the nearest bottle of tequila and convinced himself to take shots as if it was really all that better than drinking straight from the bottle. At least,  _after _ the fact, now that he realized drinking the whole bottle had always been the endgame and it didn’t much matter  _how _ he got there. 

He didn’t even  _like _ tequila. 

And he didn’t care for cocaine either, preferring to stay away from anything that would hinder his senses too much, anything more than a glass or two of wine, that is. Wax was the live fast and live large kinda guy, though he was never  _that _ reckless about it. 

Was that what it had been? Had Reece done something selfish and reckless,  _said _ something hurtful and arrogant and stupidly sent Wax out that door? 

Was he coming back?

Reece snorted the first line, not really knowing what the fuck he was doing but his eagerness making up for that. He didn’t want to  _remember. _ He didn’t want to  _think. _ He just wanted to get out of his fucking  _head. _ One moment he was dwelling and the next he was… flying, detaching himself from all the wires life and the agency and his visions and Wax had plugged him into. The bit that was left he sucked up with a finger and spread out over his teeth, coating his gums and caressing his tongue. 

The second line he took fast and free, feeling freer than he ever had before, like he was on top of the world and didn’t give a fuck about anything and didn’t  _have _ to give a fuck about anything because  _nothing _ out there was important enough, not even Charlie goddamn Wax. He took it too fast though, head spinning like a carousel and then careening out of control like his horse had run right off the rails and straight down into hell itself. There was fire licking his face and then his lips and finally his insides, lighting him up like a match, begging Reece to cry out and sob and convulse like a marionette on a string and, most importantly, scream. 

That was when his head found the glass.

* * *

The world rushed back into focus as if it had been squeezed out of a tube, colors rippling past him in heady, sickening intensity, rapidly pushing in on him like paint splattering across a tumultuously rocking sky. The air was thinner, trickling down into his lungs too slowly, having Reece gasp for innumerable seconds before he willed himself to breathe in slowly and shallowly.

Everything reeked of pomegranates.

It felt like he had been sucked into one of his visions or a dream or somewhere Reece absolutely  _knew _ he shouldn’t be. It wasn’t the first time he wanted Wax at his back, gun pointed at the swaying of every branch, brashly callous words perhaps his sharpest weapon. 

Reece realized then that the colors weren’t  _just _ colors. There were  _people _ moving rapidly past him: thin, mostly translucent figures weaving in between trees and so close to Reece he was positive they would collide with him at some point. They never did, never swept Reece off his feet, never stilled nor slowed even when a ripple formed to his immediate left. 

He turned, eyes honing in with startling clarity on a mere girl, no more than twelve or thirteen and yet dressed in some kind of strange golden armor, carrying a spear sharp enough to pierce through flesh and bone.

This wasn’t a human child, Reece concluded. She looked too  _otherworldly _ with her sharp, calculating amber eyes, the assertive way in which she held herself starkly betraying her years. 

No, this was no human at all.

“Where am I?” Reece freaked, stepping away from her without trying to make it seem too obvious and at the same time trying to gauge how high or how drunk he was. It definitely wasn’t a vision or a dream; everything was too crystal clear to be a vision and he never remembered his dreams, which were mostly visions playing on his unconscious mind anyway. Unless this was a  _new _ type of vision.

Reece almost would rather have it be a drug-induced hallucination.

“We are in the kingdom of the Seelie.”

She pointed the tip of her spear away from him, unhooking her breastplate and setting it down on the grass beside her. The world calmed around them, the blurred figures dimming and then receding entirely, and Reece peered at her more closely without trying to be bewitched too much by her obvious glamour. It was apparent in the way she moved that there was a glimmer of light shielding her from him, once wrapping itself around her armor and now her. It was a hum in the very air around them, very much like the hum of wiccan magic.

Unused to magic, a ripple of fear shot through Reece.

“Seelie?” Now where had he  _heard _ that before, or rather, read about it?

Her laughter filled him with unexpected joy, pealing through the woods surrounding them like the soft, unmistakable clinking of bells. There  _was _ magic everywhere around him, settling on him like a second skin and pricking gently as if examining a foreign presence. The girl standing before him was  _doused _ in it and much amused by his confusion. “They are the fae, as am I.” She moved five feet within the blink of an eye, sending Reece stumbling backward in alarm. His back collided with the trunk of a tree that he was fearfully  _certain _ hadn’t been there before. “Have no fear, mortal, I have not been beckoned to you to harm you. I come to ask a favor, on behalf of my kind.”

_Faeries? _ Reece had never come across faeries before and he was  _positive _ Wax hadn’t either. Faeries belonged to the world of faerie tales, mere stories of fantasy used primarily to frighten children, sometimes purely for entertainment purposes. Sure, there were selkies and sirens and kelpies and nearly everything else out there, some of which could be  _technically _ classified as faeries, but actual faeries? He’d come across them in plenty of books, yes, but even the agency had never placed any shred of truth in their existence. Maybe they had been out there all this time and just knew how to hide, but Reece doubted it. An entire kingdom, even glamored with fae magic, which would have to be ten  _thousand _ times more powerful than wiccan magic, would have been exposed at one point or another. 

_Nothing _ could hide from the agency for long enough, not for hundreds of years anyway. 

The little Reece remembered from his casual reading were two things: Never trust faeries, they were cunning tricksters in every sense of the word, oftentimes cruel or even just as dangerously careless. They had no sense of morality or mercy and often viewed humans as mere playthings. On the other hand, the second thing that had stuck out in Reece’s mind, they did have one very specific code to follow: if a human learned a faerie’s name then the human essentially owned them, or at least in the sense that the faerie could never do any direct or indirect harm to that human and could never disobey a direct order. Would they try to twist that order, yes, but they were, essentially, forever in that human’s debt unless they found some conniving way to get that human killed not by their own hands nor by their own words.

Reece knew beyond a doubt that the only way to trust a faerie, fae, whatever they called themselves was to get that  _name_ . 

He ran his hands down his arms, trying to brush the majority of the magic away. He was out of his element here, trapped in their world, so the clearest he could get his head without the manipulation of magic, the better. “What’s the favor?”

“At some point in the near future, we will request your aid. We will ask you to help one of our kind, in your world, one who has been captured and wronged. You will find them and bring them back to us. You will do this with no questions asked.” He remembered reading  _that _ about the fae too: they didn’t like questions or humans prying into their business. 

It wasn’t the first time he had worked a case without much intel. Sometimes research couldn’t get you far enough, sometimes they really  _did _ have to rely on Wax’s pompous attitude and his ridiculous assortment of guns and more bullets than Reece could line his every pocket with. “When?”

She shook her head, confirming Reece’s suspicions that this was going to be anything but clear cut. Faeries were enigmatic at the best of times and downright vicious, unpredictably so, at the very,  _very _ worst. “That we cannot say. What is the cost, mortal?”

“I want your name.” It was the only answer worth giving, the only favor worth requesting, though one most humans would be ignorant enough never to know. It was both a foolish move and a smart one at the same time because it still meant she could - and no doubt would - paint a target all over him, either marking him as her own, scheming until she discovered a way for another fae to fulfill her desire, or as a free-for-all.

Reece swallowed hard and tried to push the thought of him being a free-for-all target or buffet or really anything else his mind could conjure up for  _every_ fae out there out of his head for good. 

So he knew it wouldn’t go over well, but he also knew that it wasn’t too high a cost for her to pay. There was no way a faerie would have bothered a human unless it was dire; fae usually stayed away from humans unless in rare and special circumstances. Reece  _especially_ figured that to be the case given he had never come across any proof of their existence. 

She bristled at first, then ignited with an anger so intense it seemed to light up the sky above them in darkling fire. “Reela.”

He lowered his head to her in the visage of a bow. He had insulted her, there had been no way around that, but if he could even give her back a  _fraction _ of her pride… “I give you my word, Reela, that I won’t ask you to do anything that’s not in your nature. You must understand that I asked for this because it is the only way I can protect myself once I complete your favor. What’s to say you or someone else won’t come after me?” He knew it was a fair and absolutely on point question; it was only confirmed by Reela reeling in the worst of her fury, the sky softening above them as if releasing a breath. 

Faeries weren’t fair, didn’t play by the rules, but their code was ironclad and might as well have been actually made of iron for the impossibility of being able to escape it. Just because he was doing them a favor didn’t mean they owed him, even though  _they _ themselves had requested the favor. He was out on a ledge here, unprotected, entirely at their mercy save for their need of him. Yet once that need had been fulfilled, what then? 

Wax always told him to be smart, so for once he was thinking clearly.

_But I wasn’t before, was I? _ Memories rushed at him, assaulting his concentration, memories where he was frantically unsealing Wax’s ziploc bag of cocaine, not careful enough as most of the powder spilled over his shoes, jacket and sleeves. He’d dumped the rest on the coffee table haphazardly, smearing across the glass, only a set of red rimmed eyes peering out to judge him. With sore, twitchy, blood-spotted fingers he had formed two perfect lines with what had remained. 

He could remember his head near to exploding and then…

Reela handed him his jacket, coated with odd patches of snow that could be easily explained by what was currently falling around them, blanketing Reece and scattering the magic that had been gradually soaking him like tainted raindrops, soft and cold and beautiful and yet… “When the time comes, mortal.”

Her blazing amber eyes burned into him as if she knew what he was thinking and she likely  _did. _ It meant she knew him, knew that maybe he was the only one sucker enough to help the fae, aware he didn’t see the world in black and white. Not all monsters killed, so not all deserved to be put down. His visions guided him to the worst of the worst and he took care of it. Reela could never be trusted and yet he found it didn’t matter; if he could help then he would, simple as that. 

When the time came, if this fae had been wronged by humans as she had claimed, then he would help. But he had his own moral code to follow too, one not as physically binding as theirs but no less important to his livelihood.

“I’ll be ready,” he confirmed, clutching the warm jacket that smelled of Earth and home and even  _Wax _ close to his chest, grounding himself. 

She touched his arm, sending a brilliant, unearthly wave of heat throughout his entire body. She was bare now save for a thin, multi-colored dress, fluttering around her and brushing ever so gingerly against Reece, her armor having been entirely peeled off her. Sparks of her own gentle, curious magic soothed his skin, stripping him of the worst of the ill-intentioned patches of magic trying to hold him in her world. Reece realized then how startlingly beautiful she was and how much he was utterly fascinated by her. “It will be a bit less disorienting if you close your eyes…”

Before he could follow her suggestion, the world around him was sucked into a screeching tunnel and he along with it.

* * *

“Yeah, sure, wake him up every hour or so, I  _know _ the drill.”

Wax’s voice filtered into his consciousness, overpowering anything else Reece may have tried to hold onto. That was Wax: always the largest presence in the room, demandingly,  _stubbornly _ pressing everything else that may have vied for Reece’s attention into the background. 

His eyes opened, vision uncloaking to reveal a completely normal and entirely boring gray ceiling. He sensed Wax to his right, felt a large, calloused palm holding onto the lower part of his arm just above his wrist, lightly, awkwardly. “Hey, Reece, how ya feeling?”

“What happened?” He swallowed, what felt like chalk in his throat having him sit up abruptly and cough for a good, long spell.

Wax’s hand rubbed at his back, firmly but gently. “You got knocked on the head pretty hard and face-planted. Luckily it was on carpet and not concrete.”

Reece could hear in his partner’s voice how relieved he was. Wax might not overtly say it and his hands might not shake, but the dark points of light in his eyes and the stress lines creasing his forehead affirmed the truth. Not to mention, the way he would hover over Reece until he was  _firmly_ out of the danger zone was proof enough. 

“We’re gonna have to talk about your shampoo choices, Reece cup.”

“What?” Reece murmured, blinking away the cobwebs now that the air around him felt clear and substantial again. Wait… when  _hadn’t _ it? He had no idea how long he’d been lying on the ground, but from the stiffness in his back he figured it’d been a while. 

“Your hair smells like pomegranates.” That had been Reece’s first reaction to the Seelie kingdom, the little he could recall of his vision or dream or… how everything had smelled like pomegranates, even the air itself had seemed to taste like them. Wax didn’t wait for a response, which Reece doubted he would have been able to give anyway. “How many fingers am I holding up?” He pressed.

Reece peered at him carefully, wondering if Wax remembered their argument. Wait… argument? Reece wracked his head but he couldn’t remember it either and maybe that was for the better. Except… he had no idea what had happened and no idea what was going on now. Wax obviously thought he had a concussion but Reece couldn’t even remember getting hit, or anything that had led up to him getting knocked out…

What did it matter? It was great just to have Wax  _not_ glaring daggers into him. If he ever  _had _ been. 

“Eight,” Reece responded cheekily, grinning up at his partner, who would have slapped him upside the head if Reece knew he wasn’t altogether sure he  _didn’t _ have a serious concussion. Wax was only holding up one hand, after all. 

He did, however, succeed in having Wax back off and stop mother-henning him. “The shit I have to put up with.”

Reece rose slowly, trying to stretch out the soreness of his shoulder and palpitating his head gently. It  _did _ feel sore and he  _did _ have a headache, but while he felt a dot or two of stickiness, his fingers came away only with a very minimal amount of blood. Maybe Wax had been right and maybe he  _had _ taken too hard a hit on the head rather than taken a hit too many on Wax’s latest batch of coke. Then again, with how often Wax indulged in various illegal substances, Reece wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t been  _both. _

He was mildly confused at the white patches he found rubbed thoroughly into his jacket.

Wax waited patiently for him, or at least used the time as an excuse to examine him while he thought Reece was preoccupied. Even Wax had his limits though. “So, honeybug, you were talkin’ ‘bout a bunch’a weird crap before I roused ya. Something about faeries and wings and flying horses?”

_Faeries, _ Reece would have responded, but then decided not to freak Wax out. When they popped up again,  _if _ they popped up again and he had to deal with it then they would,  _together. _ No need to stress his partner out unnecessarily before then. 

“You know dreams, Wax. Sometimes you remember them and sometimes you can’t.” Usually, Reece would never even  _try _ to lie to Wax, but then again it wasn’t a  _complete _ lie, given Reece wasn’t sure himself whether he had been dreaming or hallucinating or receiving or tripping or simply whisked off to another dimension, or maybe even a combination of any of those things. 

“Well,” Wax sighed, patting Reece’s back not  _nearly _ gingerly enough. “My dreams get trippy too sometimes. Come on, pard, let’s get you one of those damn frappe things you like so much.” 

Caffeine, Reece decided, was  _exactly _ what he needed. 

**FIN**


End file.
